“I’m just like him”

A period of time I’ve found myself having overwhelming nostalgia for is orientation week at university. This was the first week, where for five days you would be taken on a tour around campus and shown the ropes of the various aspects of “student life.”

Feeling the wrath of my current schedule, I so wish to go back. I got back from campus early, enjoyed the sunshine and went on road trips to explore the area with one of my friends from high-school, Botlhale, who was also studying at the University of Pretoria. It really was different. The air had a different smell and everything looked brighter. That’s probably because it was February, which is summer for me and the four other people that live in the southern hemisphere. Perhaps the doom and gloom I see every morning isn’t an extension of a deep emotional longing for a sweeter time, but rather normal weather considering winter is approaching. Pretoria is damn cold.

Orientation week is where you meet your friends. I struck up many conversations, but didn’t click with anyone, until one day, I met Joshua. The event scheduled for that day was a campus crawl, which is a fun way of saying one is to walk around the entirety of campus and find posters with QR codes at specific destinations, which takes over three hours and ensures you will have a rash on your thighs at the end of the day. After we walked around campus, we sat down at one of the cafés. Joshua knew more people than I did, so we were soon joined by another young man, Kiash. A WhatsApp group was started, and somehow, we ended up taking three more gents along, David O, David H, and Timothy.

One of our staples as a group is to head to the Steers after a particularly tough lecture or if we have a free moment and get soft serve ice cream. It’s usually only Kiash, Ivana (who we became acquainted with shortly after) and myself who have ice cream, but we all chat up a storm and have fun regardless.

I couldn’t help but reminisce slightly about my first few weeks at university, despite the university only being distantly related to the main part of this story. The University of Pretoria, like most universities, has a library with a digital catalogue, allowing you to find books related to your studies, see where they are located in the library, and borrow them. One of my modules integrates library searches into tests, so one is effectively taught how to exploit this system to the fullest. Most first-year students don’t care, because we don’t really create content, like write theses or conduct studies, on a large scale.

One day, I was bored and decided to play around with the search feature. “That library is something like six storeys tall,” I thought, “I wonder if there is by any chance an interesting book on one of those shelves.” I looked for books related to watchmaking… I was amazed. Books on watchmaking aren’t easy to come by and aren’t typically cheap, which is why I only have two. In the library I found classics like Watchmaking by George Daniels, Practical Watch Repair by Donald de Carle, of which I own a print copy, and many, many more. There’s material from the golden age of American watchmaking, like informational columns from Elgin and Waltham on how to take care of your watch. Most of those were in print form, which wasn’t exactly practical, because I was writing semester tests, so I wouldn’t have too much time for reading in the six days one is allowed to borrow a book for.

One book stood out to me for the fact that it was an ebook, which was All in Good Time: Reflections of a Watchmaker by George Daniels. This was his autobiography and I felt compelled to read it. I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s incredible to see how Daniels went from living in poverty with parents who didn’t really care for him to owning Bentleys and being flown all over the world to look at and repair watches.

I was inspired. I didn’t grow up in poverty and my parents do genuinely care for me 85% of the time. I also had to largely teach myself the art of watchmaking. I also have a liking for old British luxury cars. One of Daniels’ Bentleys was a 1926 model,which would have been thirty odd years old by the time he bought it. My attainable dream car has for the longest time been a Rolls-Royce Corniche Fixedhead. They’re over fifty years old now and are cheap to buy, but all but cheap to run. Despite having an engine that drinks fuel faster than I would be able to pay for it mated to a slushy GM 3-speed automatic transmission, I really want one. Another British car I fancy is the Jaguar 420G, which looks sinister, but also costs an arm and a leg to run. The problem remains with the final car I’ll mention: the Bentley Continental GT.

The Continental GT came out right when I was born, so I saw much of it on television and in magazines. I never had much of an opinion on them until they got cheap. I’m now in the position where the first large purchase I’m considering making once I finish my studies and start working is a six-litre W12 money pit.

Daniels meticulously restored his Bentleys. He worked sixteen hour days every week, with Monday to Friday being for watches and Friday to Sunday being for whatever Bentley he owned at the time. Maybe that means my first big purchase should be an accident-damaged six-litre W12 grand touring coupè from the year I was born. Forget birth year watches, I want a birth year shitbox.

Reading about Daniels’ passion really struck a chord with me. I feel I am in some ways very similar to him. I am fascinated with all things mechanical. I can talk about watches or cars for the whole day. I love travelling. I routinely plague myself with thoughts about designing my own watch movement. I consider myself to be humble…

And I have a burning hot love for watches, cars and fountain pens that might bankrupt me. If I go broke, I’ll be doing it with a smile.